I made a new friend this week! Otherwise it was just another
summer week – blazing heat and humidity at the start but by the end of the
week, it was cool enough to open the windows. I was watering for Lorri and my
neighbor so was stopping both before and after work to water. At work, closing
meetings started so my busiest two weeks of my work year are here. It’s all good.
A woman from the Bursar’s Office had a party in our
conference room to honor her mom, who had recently died. I popped in to pay my
respects and ended up sitting, eating and listening to Theresa’s stories, which
were touching. I introduced myself to the woman sitting next to me, who works
in the Registrar’s Office on the first floor yet I’d never seen her. We started
talking and it’s like we were separated at birth. She’s a gardener, organic no
less, liberal, my age and single. It was like old home week and we had a lovely
chat. I emailed her when I got back to my desk and we made plans to eat lunch
together on Wednesday. The conversation was easy and never lagged. We’re going
to get together again after she finishes summer graduation and I’m back from
RI. How fun to find a new friend, right?
I tried to not let the blazing heat impact my life and parking
across the street helped. Have I mentioned recently how much, in a good way, paying
for an assigned spot has made such a big difference in my life? Anyway, it was
over 100 with the heat index on Tuesday but I ventured to East Campus at lunch to
hear Timothy Schaffert speak about his new book The Swan Gondola, which I’m
half way through. It was worth going out in the heat and I introduced myself
and chatted with him a bit after the lecture. If you haven’t read his books,
you should. They’re quirky and well written. He’s a Nebraska author and teaches
at UNL.
The work week flew by. I was ticking things off of my Nora’s
gone to do list and answering questions from all fronts constantly it seemed.
By the end of the week, I was concentrating on closing meeting prep. Mary had
been out of town but returned Wednesday afternoon and the first closing meeting
was Thursday. Nora was back to work on Friday.
I was looking forward to the weekend big time. I had no
plans, which was a first in awhile, and it was going to be hot on Saturday so I
planned to stay inside and get stuff done. I’d fought the urge to head straight
home on Friday, stopping at Menard’s and Home Depot to buy the egg crate plastic
light cover panels I would use to keep the repacked Corelle boxes (the entire
back seat of my car was loaded with new cardboard boxes) off the basement
floor. So there was that and I wanted to do a bunch of cooking. The house hadn’t
been cleaned since before the cookout. Yikes!
Well, I did keep busy on Saturday but can’t say I got
anything done in the basement. Nor did I clean. But I did manage to go through
every bit of my yarn and reorganize it all. That was because of a yarn fiasco
that happened mid-week, where I sold some yarn that I had posted online but
then couldn’t find it. I spent all night Wednesday ripping through all my yarn,
still not finding it and leaving piles of yarn all over the front and spare
rooms. The buyer was flexible about colors though so between my stash and Anne’s,
I came up with replacement yarn. Anyway, I spent all afternoon Saturday
reorganizing it all, never finding the missing yarn by the way. I have way too
much yarn. There, I said it.
I had managed to get the house picked up and the kitchen
back in order before I tackled the yarn so I spent Sunday messing it up again.
I was drowning in produce! I had picked 2 kinds of squash from my garden then
was given cucumbers (from 2 different people), peppers and a bag of sweet corn.
The Warehouse had strawberries for 50 cents a box so I’d bought a couple of
those too, which would need some heavy picking over but it was worth it at that
price.
I woke up at 5:00 on Sunday and couldn’t fall back asleep so
was up making an omelet at 5:30. After a relaxing morning of knitting and
laundry, I got busy cooking. I made cucumber salad, ham salad, squash/pesto
pasta for dinner, prepped a ton of strawberries (made sauce for cakes to take
to knitting and froze some puree to make jam this winter) and made an
experimental bread – strawberry/banana with chocolate chips. I still have the
corn to deal with and will buy some Italian sausage for sausage and peppers but
feel good with my cleaned out frig and lots of food for this busy week. I’ll
bring a big bag of scraps to knitting for Lori’s chickens and have plenty to
take good lunches to work and have more pasta to nuke for dinners too. This
next week will be a busy one so it’ll be good to have yummy food that’s ready
to go. And the weather will be glorious so it’s all good.
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